The Tomb That Ruth Built (A Mickey Rawlings Mystery)

by Troy Soos

  The apoplectic manager grumbled a few indistinct words and turned his attention to me. “You’re just as late as he is, so it’s the same for you—fifty bucks!”

  I didn’t make Babe Ruth’s salary and I didn’t carry a roll of money like he did. I began to explain, “I don’t have—”

  Huggins briefly hesitated; he might have realized that the penalty was a bit stiff for me. “You don’t need to pay me now,” he said. “Mr. Barrow will take it out of your next paycheck.”

  I nodded. What the hell, I did miss curfew, so if there’s a price for that I had to pay it. But I hated to have to tell Margie that I was losing almost a week’s salary.

  Huggins asked in a somewhat calmer tone, “What kind of trouble did that big ox get you into last night?”

  I wished I could have told him the truth about what a tame evening it had actually been. The manager might then have known that he and the Babe were actually seeing eye-to-eye on some things. But I think they simply enjoyed feuding with each other. Besides, whether good or bad, you don’t tell your manager what other players have been doing. I answered, “We just stayed out a little too late, Hug. Sorry.”

  He eyed me up and down, obviously dissatisfied with my answer. “Well, you must be tired after your big night. I’ll let you rest on the bench today.”

  I didn’t mind the fine as much as I did being benched—especially after my performance yesterday. My only hope was that the game would require me to go in. I had confidence that Miller Huggins would make the right moves to win. If the situation called for it, I might still get to play.

  * * *

  It turned out that I didn’t miss a thing because no one got to play. The light rains that had followed the Babe and me all morning during our drive to Boston had settled over the city and turned into a cold deluge. The game was called off by mid-afternoon, and I decided it was ideal weather to do some reading.

  Across the corner of Copley Square, an infield toss from our hotel, was the magnificent Boston Public Library. It was a solid building of granite and sandstone topped by a red tile roof with copper cresting. The interior was lavish, with murals, statues, vaulted ceilings, and heavy green velvet drapery. There was also an open air courtyard, which was deserted on this rainy day.

  Inside the library, I made some inquiries and was directed to the reference section. I’d had no luck learning about Spats Pollard by asking questions, so I hoped that a review of the printed records would be more productive.

  I was assisted by a stooped, impeccably dressed old gentleman who wore pince-nez and smelled of peppermint. Since reference books couldn’t be taken from the room, I had to use them under his supervision. He asked why I was conducting my research, and I told him I was a ballplayer looking for some former teammates. The librarian appeared skeptical that a baseball player would know how to read, but he patiently brought me every volume I requested, handling each one as if it was the Gutenberg Bible.

  Soon I had five years’ worth of baseball record books piled around me on the reading table. They included the annual Who’s Who in Baseball, published by Baseball Magazine, along with the Spalding and Reach guides.

  I pored through the books, turning the pages carefully, and scrutinizing every item that might prove useful. I made notes on stationery that I’d brought from the Copley Plaza, meticulously recording the name of every teammate of Spats Pollard that I could find.

  The record books carried information on all of organized baseball, major league and minor, so the process was a lengthy one. After compiling the names of Pollard’s past teammates, I checked to see which of them were still playing. Pollard’s career hadn’t amounted to much, so this yielded a much shorter list.

  Finally, I reviewed this year’s team schedules to see when I would be in the same city as one of these players. That whittled the list down to a single ballplayer. According to the National League schedule, I could meet him in Brooklyn in one week.

  Chapter Nine

  The Yankees’ train pulled into Pennsylvania Station again on the first Friday in May, after a brief two-city road trip. We had dropped two of the three games against the Red Sox, but came back to take three out of four against the Senators in Washington. Our record was now ten wins and six losses on the young season. That put us in second place, half a game behind Detroit. Bunched within a game of us were Cleveland and Philadelphia.

  As for me, I got into three more games during the road trip, picking up two singles and scoring as a pinch runner. I was now batting over .300 for the season, more than fifty points higher than I usually managed to achieve. Miller Huggins’ anger at me had faded after a day. In addition to giving me a few more chances to play, he continued to use me as a base coach and occasionally asked my opinions on strategy.

  Tomorrow, we would open a home stand against the Athletics at Yankee Stadium. After the busy road trip and with a difficult schedule coming up, Huggins had told all of us to take it easy today and rest up. So how did I choose to spend my day off? I took Margie to a baseball game.

  * * *

  Ebbets Field was an intimate ballpark that had opened ten years ago in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. The site had once been a desolate plot of land known as “Pigtown” because of all the local hog farms, but no trace of those humble origins remained.

  Surrounded by a maze of trolley lines, the modern double-decked park featured a grandiose entrance on Sullivan Place and a spectacular marble rotunda. Dodgers’ owner Charlie Ebbets had built a jewel of a ballpark that would probably last a century. Unfortunately for Brooklyn fans, he seldom could assemble a team of the same caliber. Although the team had won two pennants during the park’s existence, it usually finished in the bottom half of the league standings. They were currently dead last, and attendance was so light that I had no trouble getting us good seats.

  Margie and I were comfortably ensconced in a fourth row box midway between home plate and first base when Brooklyn’s Leon Cadore loped out to the pitcher’s mound to face the top of the Phillies batter order. Margie was playing hooky from the Griffith studio for the day, and had dressed for the occasion in a pastel yellow frock with a white middy collar. I wore seersucker, and both of us would have a challenge keeping our clothes clean since we’d provisioned ourselves with hot dogs, peanuts, and sodas from passing vendors. It was a beautiful afternoon for a ballgame and a rare treat for me to be able to sit back and enjoy it as a fan.

  Being at Ebbets Field again also brought back memories. I pointed to a section not far from us and said to Margie, “That’s where your friends from Vitagraph sat: Florence Hampton, Arthur V. Carlyle, and that funny director…”

  “Elmer Garvin,” she said with a wistful smile. “Oh, that seems so long ago.”

  “It was. You know, sometimes everything from before the war seems like a hundred years ago.”

  Margie playfully poked my chest. “You’ve held up remarkably well for a man of a hundred and twenty!”

  “And you,” I replied, “look as pretty as the first time I saw you.”

  She turned her head and gave me a kiss, causing her bonnet to collide with my straw boater. “It was that same day,” she said.

  Oblivious to the unfolding baseball game, we reminisced about everything that had happened that memorable day in 1914—making a moving picture with Casey Stengel and Florence Hampton, meeting Margie at the Vitagraph Studio here in Brooklyn, and joining the movie crew for a party that night. Neither of us mentioned the tragedy that followed.

  Margie took a sip of soda and suddenly giggled. “I was just thinking about all that champagne we drank—and you had never had it before.”

  “You said champagne and oysters make the best meal in the world.”

  “They still do!”

  “I learned my lesson,” I said. “Champagne can make people do funny things.”

  “You mean like your dancing?” she teased.

  “My dancing is more dangerous than funny,” I replied. Margie had tried to teach me to
dance at that party, and it was a talent that I still was unable to learn.

  From several rows behind us, a leather-lunged Brooklyn partisan bellowed at umpire Bill Klem, “Hey Catfish! Why dontcha open yer damn eyes? Yuh been robbin’ us all day, yuh bum yuh!” One thing about Ebbets Field was that the crowd, no matter how small, always took a vocal interest in the game.

  I soon turned my attention to the game, too, as the Phillies and Dodgers exchanged leads in a well-played contest. It looked like Philadelphia had the contest clinched when Cy Williams hit a three-run homer onto Bedford Avenue in the eighth, but Brooklyn came back to give Cadore a 7-6 win. I was happy to see him get the victory; three years earlier he and the Boston Braves’ Joe Oeschger had locked horns in a twenty-six inning marathon that was called a tie because of darkness. I couldn’t imagine pitching almost three full games and coming away with no decision.

  The reason I had come to Flatbush today wasn’t to watch the ballgame, though, nor to reminisce with Margie. I wanted to talk to the Dodgers’ backup catcher Tim Concannon. When the game ended, Margie offered to wait for me in the rotunda while I met with him.

  I had an easy time reaching Brooklyn’s clubhouse door and getting a message to Concannon. Since the Yankees and Dodgers had traveled together on the exhibition tour in spring training, the players and officials of both clubs knew each other pretty well. I’d spoken with the catcher a few times during that trip. We were both part of that smaller fraternity of major league ballplayers, the ones who spend most games warming the bench while waiting for a chance to play.

  He recognized me the moment he came out. “Rawlings,” he said. “What brings you across the river?”

  “I came to see you.”

  Concannon was about my age, with a catcher’s thick powerful build. He was dressed in a plain brown suit and wore a pork pie hat. His eyes were intelligent—catchers are often among the brightest players on a team—and the expression on his ruggedly handsome face was placid. Concannon struck a match on the sole of his shoe and lit up a cigarette. “What about?” he asked.

  “I had a teammate on the Cubs,” I said. “A pitcher named Spats Pollard.”

  The placid expression was instantly replaced by one of revulsion. “Sonofabitch,” he muttered.

  “I guess you knew him,” I said. “You were both with the Chattanooga Lookouts in ’nineteen.”

  “Don’t remind me.” He pulled a shred of tobacco from his tongue and flicked it away. “I didn’t much like playing in the Southern Association—too damn hot for me—and I sure didn’t like being on the same team as that bastard Pollard.”

  “Could you tell me about him?”

  “I got a date, but I guess I can talk until my trolley comes.” I agreed and we began walking toward the streetcar tracks on McKeever Place, where some fans were still waiting for cars to take them home.

  “As a pitcher,” Concannon began, “Pollard wasn’t much. The only decent pitcher we had on that club was Wiley Marshall—he hasn’t made it to the majors yet, as far as I know. Anyway, with a lousy staff and some players still in the service, our manager Sammy Strang really had to juggle to keep a starting rotation together. Somehow Pollard got himself a spot in it. He thought of himself as an ace, but he didn’t have much of an arm. He’d barely make it as a batting practice pitcher in the big leagues.”

  “That’s the way I remember him,” I said. “The only reason he made the Cubs was because of the war, and he didn’t last long anyway.” We stopped talking long enough to weave our way past a couple of slow-moving automobiles. When we were safely on the other side of the street, I asked, “What else can you tell me about Pollard? Why didn’t you like him?”

  “He was a complete turd of a human being—didn’t have an honest bone in his body.”

  “What did he do?”

  Concannon took the cigarette from his lips and spat. “Stole, cheated, did anything he could to make a quick buck for himself.” He eyed an approaching trolley. “This might be… nah, it ain’t mine. Anyway, Pollard probably took money from every guy on the team, including me. He got a lot of it in card games, until we found he was using marked cards.” Concannon smiled for the first time since I’d mentioned the former pitcher’s name. “Pollard got a good thrashing from us for that—it cost him a couple of teeth. Then later he had a scheme for selling moonshine that he was gonna get from some hillbilly in Georgia. He got some of the boys to invest in a cargo that turned out to be nothing but vinegar—we figured Pollard kept the money and sold the real liquor himself. That earned him another beating, but he still didn’t learn his lesson.”

  “What else did he do?”

  “The last thing he did was steal Strang’s pocket watch. Can you beat that for stupid?” The catcher shook his head. “He steals the manager’s watch, gets caught with it, and tries to claim it’s his own—even though it had Sammy’s name engraved right on it. He didn’t get a beating, but Strang cut him loose right in the middle of a road trip. We were on our way to Little Rock, and he put Pollard off the train in Forrest City. As far as I know, the thieving sonofabitch is still in Arkansas—and as far as I’m concerned, he can damned well stay there.” He tossed his cigarette on the ground. “This one’s mine,” he said, as a street car squealed to a stop.

  “Thanks for the talk.” I saw no reason to tell him that Spats Pollard was no longer in Forrest City.

  From the steps of the trolley, Concannon yelled to me, “Hey, we’re going to Coney. Maybe my date has a friend for you, if you want to come.”

  I waved him off. “Got my own, thanks!”

  I hurried to the rotunda to meet Margie. That evening, after dinner at a restaurant near Times Square, she again tried to teach me to dance.

  * * *

  Only a half dozen of us were in the Yankees’ clubhouse, early arrivals before the series opener against the visiting Athletics. Most of us had removed some of our street clothes but none of us were in uniforms yet. I was sitting in front of my locker, untying my shoes, when Andrew Vey came in. At the sight of Ed Barrow’s big ruddy-faced assistant, I assumed I was going to be called in to the business manager’s office again.

  As usual, Vey wore a thin bow tie that appeared to be choking him. He dug a finger into his collar and cleared his throat to get our attention. Like every other sound that he emitted, it was high and pinched. He announced, “I have your paychecks.” Several players jumped up to collect them.

  Vey pulled a handful of envelopes from his jacket pocket and began to make the rounds, starting with Hinkey Haines. He brought mine last. As he handed it to me, he said, “I’m afraid there’s been an adjustment to yours.” Vey appeared genuinely sorry.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Had a late night in Boston and missed curfew.”

  Waite Hoyt and Sad Sam Jones arrived in the clubhouse and Vey went to give them their checks. As he did, I tore my envelope open and peeked inside. As expected, it was fifty dollars light.

  Vey came back to me. “Mr. Barrow would like a report,” he said.

  I was happy that at least this time he wasn’t bothering me during a game. “When?” I asked.

  “How about if we step outside now?” Vey suggested.

  “Mr. Barrow is here?” I couldn’t picture him venturing outside of his office.

  “No, he’s out of town for a meeting—that’s why I’m handing out payroll. He asked that you give me the report, and I’ll pass it on to him.”

  I agreed and followed him into the empty runway in my stocking feet.

  “What have you found out?” he asked, his broad freckled face expectant.

  “Not much,” I said. “But I think there’s one thing Mr. Barrow doesn’t have to worry about: The Babe didn’t have much—if anything—to do with Spats Pollard.”

  “You sure?”

  “Not a hundred percent. But I spoke with him and I’m convinced he doesn’t remember Pollard at all. Maybe he got some liquor from the man, but no more than he gets from a hundred other sources.�
�� I was convinced that even if Ruth had merely forgotten Pollard’s name, he would have remembered him as a former pitcher if he’d had any dealings with him.

  Vey nodded approvingly. “That’s good. Anything else?”

  “Found out a little more about Pollard. I get the feeling his death wouldn’t be mourned by anybody who knew him.” I asked Vey a question, “Are you still hearing from the newspapers about it?”

  “Not lately.”

  “Then can I drop this whole investigating business?”

  “That’s up to Mr. Barrow, and Mr. Barrow told me to keep you on it.” As he spoke, Vey’s broken nose whistled along with the words.

  “Why?”

  “We had another problem.” Vey ran a palm over his unruly bricktop. “At another concession stand.”

  “A body?”

  “No, this one was alive—but barely. Beaten worse than anything I seen in the ring.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s the fellow who leases the stand. A stadium cop found him behind the counter. Broken bones, face bloodied pretty bad. But he wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t say who did it. I convinced him that it happened outside the park, not inside, in case he does decide to report it—so we don’t get bad publicity.”

  “Another concession stand,” I said. “That can’t be coincidence.”

  “That’s what Mr. Barrow figures—and it’s why he still wants you nosing around.”

  I sighed, agreed to continue, and turned to go back into the clubhouse to get ready for the game.

  “One more thing,” Vey said.

  I faced him again, wondering what more the Yankees could possibly want me to do. Vey pulled another envelope from his pocket. “Mr. Huggins told Mr. Barrow that you’ve assumed some coaching duties for him and suggested that you be given a bonus.” He handed it to me with a small smile. When I looked at the check later, I saw that it was for fifty dollars.